I have sailed past this spot, and I have never been tempted to climb it

It is very phallic, don't you think?

Well, my card for the last week of Unstampabelles current challenge is also water related

We are having a visit this week from a Great Nephew (yes, I am that old) and he takes amazing photographs too - this is his first visit to Tassie, and I am looking forward to the shots he will take and post to Instagram! He is also a great surfer so I think there will be a few of the coast.

This is ocean inspired.....

A bit of medium with microbeads on the tops of the waves to create foam

It is usually too cold to swim this time of the year but people are telling me the water is much warmer than usual, and they have already been in - not me, oh no, not me!

Monday, September 19, 2016

but it is a 'soft day' as the Irish say, so not too damaging with wild wind and storms for the Spring Gardens.

I took this shot of one of the camelia trees in bloom the other day in the sunshine. I also picked some for inside but the heads just fell off them within a few days. Not sure why that happens as they had lots of water and were not in direct sun and they do make a nice show while they last. There are cream freshias growing wild all over the garden too and it smells beautiful late afternoon. They last much better in a vase.

My card today for Unstampabelles is all about Spring, when birds begin to mate and nest.....I love seeing them creating their nests out of whatever materials they can find. There are several in the camelias and in the big tree just outside my workshop window, and I see them flying in and out.....

I got inspired for this from a card I saw on Pinterest. Not sure whose it was, so if it is yours, thanks for the inspiration! Mine is not the same of course, but pretty similar. The bird is an SU punch.

The nest is made of string pieces rolled around in my fingers with glue, and then some 'twigs' but from scrap papers I had coloured up for another thing - I might tell about that one day but it was a dismal failure - and the green leaves were from the same project.

Die cut hearts and I put the brown one through the crimper.

The edge is a Martha Stewart edge punch - I got some when the dollar was in parity with the US - quite a while ago!

Insides it says 'Congratulations on your new home' and there is another leaf.

The front of the card is cut short, the strip added and then the image extended beyond the border as well. Some bling for the eye and to finish off under the nest.

Hope you like it and perhaps it will inspire you to go to our challenge at

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Hello Peeps! How is your day going? Mine is doing OK but my mojo has taken a bit of a hike and I thought if you have seen it, will you send it home please as I miss it!

Talking of sending someone home, this little fella wandered a bit far from home too ....

A Southern Rockhopper Penguin… a long way at home – captured on the Tasman Peninsula yesterday by Out there photography by Warren Donnelly who says: “They normally range from New Zealand to Antarctica, and the southern tip of South America. thankfully this little guy was rescued by Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service officers yesterday afternoon at Eaglehawk Neck, next to the Blowhole on the Tasman Peninsula. Myself and some Mainland visitors alerted the officers to the penguin's plight, with great thanks to the visitors for taking the time to help getting this little fella rescued - many thanks, and most of the credit going to those two families.”

I have a vivid memory of arriving a primary school one day (this is a very long time ago) and seeing a little fairy penguin sitting under the water tank, trying to keep out of the sun. He was sooo tired and sooo scared. A kind local farmer collected him and took him back to the shore - he had wandered some 5 miles up the road - but we don't know what happened to him then. No Parks and Wildlife people around then to assist.

Over at Crafting with Dragonflies GrandMargret has challenged us on the team to use a fairy in our work or at least to fantasize. Now, my fantasies would probably not suit Hilde, so I thought I had better stick to the fairy idea - anyway, I don't have any stamps with husbands captured in a bottle or cage! Sometimes they really tip you over, don't they!!!!

Not that I want you to think I would ever commit a crime like that!

Too easy to get caught round here.

So I dug out my LOTV stamp sets and found one that looked as if it had not seen ink for quite a while, and stamped it up, coloured it in with Copics and added some Glitter glue .....

....then fussy cut it out.

Then what to do with it.

Are you like me - lots of offcuts from past projects where you have been playing and the leftovers are too good to throw away? My roving eye landed on the pile and I decided to use some of them up! So my fairy is on a bit of overshot spray card, and the sentiment is on a similar piece - the Sentiment is from Stamp-It.

The backing sheet is Colour Burst on a sparkly paper (SU), and the whole is on a white card blank.

It is very shiny and sparkly and loud in the sunshine outside

I wanted my girly to be a bit alternative - hence the stockings......most of the little girls in my life have worn either stripy socks, no socks or gumboots with their fairy dresses, if they had one. Often it was just the wings over whatever they were wearing (if they were wearing anything of course - that phase of their lives often coincides with shedding clothes as well).

It is digital in that I had it sent to me electronically and I can manipulate the size of it a bit

However, the image is whole and already coloured and all I needed to do was print it, and cut it out, and layer it up.

I the mixed and matched things from the stash to embellish it up - some SU DP; some D'lish kit bits; and some old, old stickers from the stash in the sticker tray.

I thought it was a good card for a smallish boy for birthday or even for a note card.

He is rather cute and he has obviously had a great time playing too.....now it is Spring (or Summertime) or even the last of the dog days in Autumn. The flowers are out and the bees are (still) a buzzing! It is obvious that the freedom to play until you fall asleep is limited by time as well - we all grow up eventually and have different responsibilities, including wombats!

I have been re-reading Anne of Green Gables lately and have cried my way through five books in the Omnibus to date - so I am feeling sort of sentimental about the playing time and the freedom we give kids these days in comparison to the many golden days those children in the books had - days quite like enough to my own childhood in places to not be alien to me when reading them. However, I know that today's kids would not be able to play in the woods and get dirty like this little lad has obviously done - mores the pity. Or fall asleep where they are like the wombat!

Monday, September 5, 2016

Unstampabelles has a new challenge for September - #61Changing Seasons, with a TWIST of being masculine. Before I get into that............

...........I thought I would tell you what I have been up to lately. Believe it or not, I went to Paperific last weekend. Oh, you knew. Did someone tell you? I told you! Well - fancy that! Yes, I did go for the Friday, and had a great time and got some lovely things to add to my stash. However, before I went to the Craft Show I went to another show - Matilda! What a fabulous show it was too. I can highly recommend it if it comes near you.

The set before the show......

After the Craft Show I went to the National Gallery in Melbourne, to the Degas exhibition. My feet almost fell off at the end of my trip with all the walking around I did, but I did enjoy it all.

My Stash additions!

If you can see the pastes and paints in there, I used some of them for my current project

Now, I decided to make a shadow box with my image inside rather than a card or journal page.

I don't know about you but in my part of the world we get four seasons in a day, particularly in the Spring and Autumn periods, and so this piece represents the fact that at a change of season, there is often more than one present in a day!

My TH man has gold paint smeared on his shoulder etc to show that the sun is shining, despite the fact that the is using his umbrella to protect him from the rain falling.

The rain, the bricks and the gold and bronze and other pastes and paints used on this surface were mostly new purchases and the surface of the image started with me testing each container to see what they looked like. I used the metallic bronze paste to create a brick wall over the test pieces, as well as smearing around lots of TH Distress inks as well.

I also dabbed lots onto black and white card to create the illusion of spring/autum leaves, and die cut leaves from these 'test' pieces.

I used an alphabet stencil sheet to create the wording - change of season, carefully masking off each letter and sponging black ink onto the 'canvas'.

I then made a shadow box frame (after watching lots of videos) and added the image to it.

I quite like my artistic efforts.

The top piece was layered onto some black card as well.

So, my play with the theme and the twist, and I hope it inspires you to create something amazing and enter it to our new challenge this month.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

You read that right - this fortnight the challenge at Crafting with Dragonflies is asking us to add a music theme to our card making.

I have a wonderful Granddaughter turning 13 about now, and she is a great lover of her cat Zap and her music, as well as Netball. We are all very proud of her as she not only does well, she tries hard also and so her great results are in a direct relationship to her efforts.

Happy Birthday Lily

When making this I had to bear in mind only one thing

NO PINK!

The litany ran through my brain all the time I was making it "No pink....don't use pink...is that pink? God, I hope not...not pink....".

I did say she was 13, and black seems to be a colour much liked by people of that age.....

I used a NEW stamp set (from Paperific - I did mention I went, didn't I?) by Tim Holtz - Crazy Cats

I coloured it with Copics and fussycut it out, and put it up with dimensionals.

The eyes are touched with Wink of Stella for a bit of shine.

The background is a play with some new colourbursts - also got at Paperific: I went, you know - and the bit of the A4 sheet that wasn't background was used to die cut the music bits. I also did some stamping direct to the paper - fishbones and music.

The sentiment was printed off into some paper, glued to card, and then cut out into strips and inked. I used SU inks, and also ran around the edges of the base as well.

I also purchased some foils and glue at Paperific......and I tried them out too, but not that successfully. There is a bit of shine on some of the notes, but I rapidly gave up as i didn't want to ruin my creation.

I love that saying - so suitable for a teenager - but I do hope the miseries are minimized both for her and her family! Hopefully Zap the giant cat will continue to boss her around and her music sustain her through the hard times - oh, and books, lots of books - did I say she is a reader?